ABSTRACT
Generally the poet, the artist is criticized for introducing himself into his work. But this is precisely what God does; this he does in Christ. And precisely this is Christianity. Creation is really fulfilled only when God has included himself in it. Tactically, Kierkegaard aimed to provoke and upbuild his readers to see selfhood as a divinely-framed artistic task. To fully appreciate Kierkegaard's aesthetic also requires thinking again about his ontology. For one, the Kierkegaardian self is more than a willed being, as Charles Taylor, Derrida, and an existentialist such as Sartre suggest. A self determining its relation to God through a mere choice or a qualitative leap becomes an overly simplistic account of the self's movement to faith. In the end, passion, intertwined with the will and imagination, causes such movement as every self has a strong natural desire and drive to become something else and more.
